Wellington, March 10 NZPA - New job advertisements placed on the website of employment company Seek reached the highest level for a year in February.

The 12,700 new ads last month were the most since January 2009, Seek New Zealand general manager Annemarie Duff said.

Despite that, new job numbers in Auckland slipped 2.7 percent after growing 16.2 percent in January.

Wellington had the best performance of the main centres in February, with 9 percent growth, while Christchurch managed to nose into positive territory with 0.5 percent growth after a 9.3 percent fall in new jobs in January.

Even with the rise in job ads, the market was tighter as the number of applicants also increased.

The Seek employment index -- the ratio between new job ads posted on seek.co.nz and the number of job applications submitted to the site -- fell a seasonally adjusted 3.9 percent in February, after improving 6.7 percent in January. Overall the index is 3.9 percent down on a year earlier.